Chrysalis Moon

Author: aslargeasalone

Getting back into the flow of writing, mostly with wordplay and poems. I'm a creative soul, from childhood to middle age, and my joy is to produce new things the world has never seen before. I'm an educator from the USA working as a college professor of lit and music. I'm learning to love myself little by little.

Feeling the moon approach, Stella tried to hurry her steps, but it was not easy; the barbed fence just past the water's bank sometimes was too close to the water, so she had to klinkerstep between the river and the bank; movement was inhibited, clumsy.

The night began to glow. She felt heat against the back of her neck, between her shoulders, and imagined her braid igniting like the wick of a candle, the fuse of a firecracker. She thought she could smell camphor. She knew time was running out.

Seeing a strip of bank with enough space to run on, she whipped her head back to see for herself. The moon loomed behind her: not beyond the mountains; between the mountains and her. Low in the sky like a downed dirigible. She could see details: folds of cloth or skin, like a swaddling baby, head forward and face upwards, but there was no face. The cloth flapped gently, in slow motion, behind. It would reach her in no time.

Stella tripped and lost her footing. She sprawled at full tilt against the wicked barbed fence.